3. Will and Phoebe

After Will had worked for the farmer for two or three years he landed a job building the Midland Railway through that part of England known as the Midlands, and when it was completed he was assigned as the foreman on a length of the line that ran between Malvern Wells and Upton on Severn. He was glad he had been diligent in improving his writing during his teens because that helped him to get the job.

It was during this work that Will met Phoebe Jeynes.5 She was the youngest daughter in a family who lived in Crockers Lane near Welland. They fell in love and were married in 1864; he was 25 and she was 21.

The good training Will had had as a boy now helped him provide for his own family. He and Phoebe settled down in the west end of a red brick double cottage on Gilvers Lane1 in the village of Hanley Castle located about half way along the length of railroad of which Will was foreman.

Gilver Lane was a quiet little lane bordered by open land and farming fields. “The country all around was beautiful. Sometimes the fields were yellow with cowslips and primroses. As the seasons changed, it was bluebells and violets, then daisies, wild hyacinths, and many other white flowers. Blackberries and nuts for anyone to pick were growing on most of the hedges between the fields.”2 A brook that had its source in the Malvern Hills meandered under a small bridge on Gilver Lane and from there joined two other streams on their way to the Severn River.

The cottage had four rooms, two up and two down. Phoebe gave birth to a son and they named him Harry William White. Two years later George was born, then Elizabeth eighteen months after that. Their family continued to grow as Alice, James, and Samuel were born.

In 1874 little William Edmund was born. They called him “Teddie” but sadly he died on his first birthday of whooping cough. Annie Sophia was the next to join the family, then Emily, then Fanny, and then Sarah Ann, who died when she was nine months old, also of whooping cough. The last three children to come were Edith Mary, Albert Edmund, and Margaret Phoebe.

You might wonder, “Where did they all sleep in such a small house?” The answer is that they were seldom all living at home at the same time; some of the older ones were married before the youngest one was born, and the big girls had gone to work in wealthier homes where they lived for most of the year. Nevertheless, it was tight quarters and the children may have had to climb over siblings to get into bed.3

An early photo of the double cottage where William, Phoebe and family lived in Gilver Lane. They occupied the right side until about 1881 when they moved to a larger, single home at the other end of the lane.		The cottage in the foreground of this 1991 photo shows the same double cottage after remodeling.
A style near Gilver Lane	Gilver Lane Road sign	Gilver Lane Countryside